Of Irony and Rationality
by prettyworthless
Summary: AU, Cato and Clove win the 74th Hunger Games and she gets sold at the Capitol ala Finnick Odair. "You dance, oh how you dance, on fire's most deceitful blues."


**Warning: **It's Cato/Clove so expect mature themes.

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It was one of the world's greatest ironies – how they felt more alive than ever when they were left with nothing to do but kill each other.

Cato's eyes flashed solely of the district pride he always aimed to savour, but Clove's intent remained nothing short of cataclysmic for her ally (and later, she would learn, for herself too). _11 and the redhead were both dead. They slayed the girl on fire with all the ingenuity they could give the Capitol. Lover Boy soon followed as if on cue when another canon resounded. _They were alone and alive for that minute… save for Claudius Templesmith's voice.

"Greetings to the final contestants of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed. Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor."

There was only half a second of silence as he paused to try and catch the words in her dark irises. That was his first mistake. She took the knife she slid in her boots before they hunted Fire Girl down and immediately cut down the distance between them, smirking all-knowingly. It was only of fate's onus that he was holding his sword in that moment – or else, all would be left unsatisfied with his too easy death – and he rashly pointed it at the girl, putting them at an impasse. That was his second one.

Her back was molded to fit into his chest, something no one could overlook now, and their bodies were arched ever so slightly to be the epitome of a tragedy. From a distance, their position could be taken as Cato embracing her from behind but their weapons just about screamed otherwise. His right arm was wrapped possessively around her, the cutting edge of the sword millimetres away from her throat. Clove was more at ease as she stood still, knife aimed unkindly to his ribs.

In dreadfully different ways, they were always each other's equivalent back at The Academy; Clove with her sadism and the unmatched malice at her fingertips, Cato with his desires and District 2's honour resting on his shoulders. Years and years of training there could've shown the world they were at a stalemate since the beginning, but Panem wasn't ready to see it, not with their preoccupation over District 12's star-crossed lovers.

"I wonder what happens now, sweetheart." Clove whispered and laughed that beautifully bloodcurdling laugh of hers. Cato couldn't help but shiver and yet grin so widely despite all of the nation's eyes on them. Because he realized she knew, oh how she most certainly knew, what was going to happen next.

If either of them moved to kill, the other would do the same a split-second later. And either of them would die together with the other. _But the games had to have a victor. _Clove buried her blade into his shirt just enough to cut it as well as a little skin and Cato did the same light treatment to her collarbone. There was merely a drop of scarlet red among Panem's television screens but in the snap of a finger, in the blink of an eye, the gamemakers broke their silence.

"Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games! I give you – the tributes of District Two!"

They could finally go home.

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_If only glances were as sharp as daggers, how you killed yourselves too long ago._

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It was not more than a week later that Cato and Clove found themselves on that Capitol train again, with nothing better to do than send each other threats in their spare time. (Her less favourite knives hidden under his sheets, his teeth treacherously drawing blood on her lower lip). Which wasn't much, considering they needed to rehearse every single thing in this Victory Tour. For some reason, it was thoroughly surprising how effortless it was to have them both playing along. Traditionally, the tour has always begun at the district after the Victor's own and this year, it was District 3 who gave them nothing but forced applause and concealed sneers, seeing as Cato killed both their tributes. The girl at first encounter in the Cornucopia and the boy right after the explosion in the arena.

Now, they were savouring District 4's attention.

The district mayor held a banquet in their honor and while Clove couldn't care less, she still gave these people meaningful half-smiles and went along with their entertainment. The venue was exhilarating though: a long seashore decorated with too many lights that reminded her of the Capitol's own, only with 4's specific touch which was the tranquil water around them. Cato was immediately called out by the mayor's daughters and Clove found herself rolling her eyes when suddenly, a sultry voice echoed in her ear.

"Enjoying the party, princess?" Finnick Odair, in all his bronze-haired and green-eyed glory, said as she quickly turned to look at him. Clove only raised an eyebrow in response. "Not too friendly, are we? Figured out as much, but you do look… prettier and more youthful without that knife of yours. So I thought perhaps you wouldn't slay me here."

"Frankly, you're not making that much sense, Mr. Odair." She replied indifferently, taking note of his outfit. Or yet again, lack thereof. Suddenly feeling a splinter of consciousness with her own floor-length dress of flimsy and sheer blue material (that matched Cato's eyes perfectly), she crossed her arms. "Couldn't you have chosen someone else to converse with?"

"Oh, how you break my heart." Finnick pouted, feigning insult, but brushed his fingers lightly over her jaw, to which Clove only glared. She let him carry on speaking.

"By the way, congratulations. I think you already got yourself an official tagline in the Capitol." He leaned towards her then, lips only a few inches away from her own and eyes trained toward her mouth. Clove resisted the urge to punch him, focusing her gaze instead on the people already lining up among the cocktail tables. She dismissed the fluttering in her stomach as nothing but mild hunger. "3 F's for the sixteen-year-old, they say. _Fresh, fierce and ferocious_… It's quite funny, really. Though trust me, only one other F matters when you really think about what they all want."

"Trust me, none of this matters when you really think about how I want to kill you now." Clove mocked him, not wanting to find out what he was going to say next.

"Come on, princess. The fact that you're his," Finnick chuckled and murmured, looking straight at Cato's direction. "makes you that much more desirable." Clove couldn't help her vision from straying that way too and once she did, her obsidian eyes clashed heavily with Cato's sapphires.

Too many things were wrong with this encounter and the older victor's conundrums, but despite her morbid curiosity, there were only three words Clove could think to snarl, "_I'm not his_."

That marked the end of their conversation as Finnick Odair walked away.

(No one realized this at that point in time that Cato was jealous, murderous even, but this requiem hasn't yet started its chorus. He noticed everything, from the way Finnick's face tilted at a dangerously close angle to Clove's, to the way she seemed unperturbed throughout the entire encounter. Cato thought, oh how he thought, that he could've crushed the older victor's skull in his hands too quickly. Still, at that point in time, he wasn't sure why.)

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_You dance, oh how you dance, on fire's most deceitful blues._

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The first time it happened, Clove wished she died on the girl on fire's hands instead. Even 11's amateurish arms would've been a better way of death. It was too unusual, too _wrong_, for her to wish this for herself but the stranger's voice whispering saccharine nothings as he ravished her throat made her want to die. The first time it happened, was the first episode of anger that Clove didn't have the urge to kill, thinking instead of wanting to disappear.

How wrong was it that she wished Katniss won the Hunger Games instead so she would be the sacrificial lamb? How good a life would that be for the girl on fire? Clove almost laughed sadistically but didn't. Because it was her stranded on this ground, after all. She had to wonder why she never tried to figure out what would come after victory back in her days at The Academy – always focused on the certain thought of winning that she never knew what would come with it.

"I bought you, remember?" The son of a filthy rich Capitol businessman hissed as he cleared her of all her clothes. "You could at least moan or plead my name." But Clove never pleaded, she never thought to, even at seeming moments of death. And she didn't even want to know his name. She only cared that she was now a pretty little rag doll being bid on by wealthy spoiled brats, sold to and exhausted by Capitol royalties she would soon like to murder one by one.

The dark-haired green-eyed boy could be the Capitol ladies' favourite bachelor but to Clove, he was just a mannequin she would easily dispose of, given the chance. But she couldn't, at least not now. (And later, she would soon realize, not even in the plethora of days to come.)

His tongue swirled patterns on every little part of her that was exposed, tasting her and revelling in the smell of her skin, but she tried her hardest not to succumb to her own involuntary human pleasures. Whatever sensation this was causing her, it's still malevolent in the very few ways she wasn't. She let her fingernails mark the most treacherous crescents in his bare back, hard enough to heave blood, and growled in his ear. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and threw him to the bed's headboard.

"That's more like it, baby." She wanted to slap him, and then wanted to bury a knife in his chest, but she settled for making this more painful for her first… customer. Little did she know this was what they all wanted from her in the first place; the ferocity she displayed at the arena.

And later, she realized as the stranger slipped a finger inside her core, this must be what Finnick Odair meant.

Later, the Capitol would realize, the only thing that got her through every instance was the thought of Cato's voice snarling at her ear and only his body hovering over her. She hated herself for these moments, hated not knowing why it was only his 'presence' that gave her rationality in the times she could only think to kill, but it worked as far as she was concerned.

And this method was far better than wishing to have died on the Girl on Fire's hands.

(Cato knew. Cato knew and he wanted to laugh at the irony of the "star-crossed lovers" perspective. Word got around the living victors that his and Clove's selling point was that they belonged to each other, and he wanted to laugh at their absurdity. They were not extensions of Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen, nor would they ever be.

But Cato knew. Cato knew and he wanted to seek Clove's sadism but couldn't bring himself to do it. He was worried he'd get the ultimate urge to break her jaw and destroy her delicately slender arms, a worry he never had before.)

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_Oh, your scars burn crimson red before dying down to darkest cinders._

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"Brutal, bloody Cato…" Clove tapped a finger to her lips, crossing her legs and showing off her bare mid-thigh in that _bloody _skintight dress. Picking locks was one of the talents she never yearned to harness but instead knew intuitively, and it was one of the habits she procured over the past few months. She sat conspicuously on the velvet couch in his hotel room, awaiting his scent and strained sighs. Finally, the goddamned hotel door opened. "How is _my _brutal, bloody Cato?"

"What the fuck are you doing here, Clove?" _Such a precious greeting for someone who spared your life,_ Clove nearly retorted, but remembered the incident in the arena didn't downplay like that at all. The impasse they stood on still bore its weight on their shoulders.

"You were always too easily infuriated, weren't you? Not to mention temperamental." She clucked her tongue and stopped herself from scowling. How foolish she was for thinking the rest of the night could go on and pass by soporifically, – this was his hotel room she headed straight to, after all.

"And you were always too callous and bothersome." Cato still wasn't sparing her a glance. And it had been too long a day already. He shrugged off his blazer and tore out his shirt, sitting on the floor with his back rested against the bedframe. "Why don't you go back to your bidders in the Capitol?"

This was a low blow. Both of them knew this was the worst thing he could cast her at this point in time. "What did you just say?" Her voice dropped an octave as she grabbed a small dagger she slid through the garter on her thigh. He raised his chin defiantly and in less than a second, she caught him in a straddling position with her knees on both sides of his hips. Cato lifted his gaze to meet Clove's scorning stare.

"I said, why don't you go back to all your men in the Capitol?"

Suddenly, before she could brush her blade on his chest or throat, chains clinked in her mind. She cradled his face in her bony hands and smirked ever so heartlessly. "Is that jealousy I hear, brutal, bloody Cato? Unadulterated jealousy? Tell me."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" In a flash, he reversed their position and it was her who was swiftly pinned down underneath him. Her head hit the floor rashly. He grabbed her shoulder a little too tightly and glared at the person he never really stopped seeing as a little girl. "What's there to be jealous of? Their lips have been all over your body, I won't want to be ravished by anyone and everyone. So why would I envy your malicious fame?"

"You know full well that's not what I meant." She hissed and punched his chest not too strongly. But before either of them could speak of more mockery, his mouth captured hers in an overdue battle. She struggled under his weight but ultimately wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, pulling him severely closer so there wasn't at all any distance between them. He groaned her name and slipped his tongue inside her parted lips.

They barely separated to breathe before carrying on the war they started. Each scorching touch equalled to remembering a fraction of the day in her mind – one of the busiest weekends she ever had since she was sold in the market. Five different bodies in more or less forty-eight hours, it had to have been her own personal record. She closed her eyes distraughtly and inhaled every inch of him that was there, struggling to forget. This was the main reason she went to his room in the first place.

(Later, both of them would realize that the sole reason she went there was because she wanted to. No complications, no rationalizations.)

She crawled into his bed, inviting him in. He kissed her again and again hard enough to leave her bad bruises, and she did not – _would not ever_ – regret a second of it. For the first time in a long time, she felt a lethal desire from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head; and a destructive strength in this desire. He has barely begun their searing motion when Clove growled into his ear, "You should have killed me in the arena." _Your sword in my heart would've felt much, much better than this, _she almost whispered to his shoulders, thinking of the life she led now.

And it felt so horrendously amazing when they finished and he finally spoke, "I know. I should've killed you then, love. I should have killed you then."

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_Your peals of laughter are the tears in your eyes; your held back tears are the chinks in your armor._

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_._

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games! I give you – the tributes of District Two!"

They could finally go home. And they went home.

They thought then that they could finally win. And they won.

The world has twisted ways of blurring sadism and masochism's boundaries, as with fury and sorrow's lines, but life's pawns continue to thrive on this twisted mythology. It was one of the world's greatest ironies, how they felt more alive than ever when they were left with nothing to do but kill each other, but it is now one of the world's worst intricacies, how they think to die is the only way to be saved.

With every gold coin dropped in her pocket for every strained kiss she sacrifices, with every homicidal thought that enters his mind since he began losing her, comes the slow realization that they genuinely found victory. _They won, but Clove thinks they're dying a slow, painful death now._

Cato knows they've been dead all along.


End file.
